Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker are two possible presidential candidates who were in New Hampshire this weekend for the same reason: to introduce themselves to voters. Though there were some similarities in the schedules of the two would-be front-runners, the men received starkly different reactions.

The former Florida governor faced the challenge of not only using his family name to his advantage but adapting his issues on hot-button topics like the Common Core and immigration to appeal to the Granite State’s conservative voters. The Wisconsin governor simply had to tell his personal story to motivate his audience.

The enthusiasm that Walker earned at his address to the 2016 Kickoff Grassroots Training Session hosted by the New Hampshire GOP Saturday was missing at the house party held for Bush Friday night. At the house party, the crowd of roughly 100 invited guests and upward of 60 media attendees packed the home of Fergus Cullen, the state’s former GOP chairman, forcing everyone to stand throughout because there was simply no room to sit down.

On Saturday, the high school auditorium filled with volunteer activists for Walker’s speech all had a seat but chose to get on their feet multiple times throughout his nearly 45-minute speech.

Another show of support at Walker’s event that was lacking at Bush’s was a smattering of “hallelujah” affirmations throughout his talk.

“I think he’s a man of great courage,” Denis Cronin told ABC News after Walker’s speech. “I thought he was great. Very articulate.”

Walker generated more passion – on both sides – because of his fight against unions in Wisconsin. There were several dozen union workers protesting outside the high school where Walker held his event Saturday, though they dispersed when it started lightly snowing an hour before the governor arrived.

There were no such protests at either public Bush function, only interest in seeing the next member of the political family try to win over Granite State voters.

“He’s somebody you have to see and listen to him, but I don’t agree with a lot of his immigration stuff,” said Ken Hawkins, a former state representative who spoke to ABC News before Walker’s speech at the New Hampshire GOP event.

“I think that people are tired of Bushes just like they’re tired of Clinton’s just like they were tired of Kennedy’s,” Hawkins said.

The son and brother of former presidents is going to have a tougher time portraying himself as an “everyman” than the son of a preacher who flipped burgers growing up and whose sons went to public school. Walker talked about his love of Kohl’s cash, boasting that he bought the sweater he was wearing for $1 Friday, while Bush talked about a conversation he had with the founder of Uber and how new self-serve soda machines at his movie theater in South Coral Gables, Florida, will lead to fewer low-income jobs.

When it comes to policy, Bush has the hurdle of reaffirming himself as a conservative in spite of his support for immigration overhaul and Common Core education standards.

“Immigration overhaul” is ABC News language meaning amnesty.

More:

In tackling those particular issues, he won the support of moderate Republicans or self-proclaimed independents — like Brian Lenzi, who attended the party at Cullen’s house and thought Bush “presented himself very well” – but will lose conservatives at the same time.

“I think based on what I am hearing, he’s trying to appeal to the center and that’s not what I’m looking for,” fellow Cullen party attendee Fenton Groen told ABC News.

A new poll of GOP voters finds Rubio in first place, Walker second. But Rubio has much higher negatives than Walker – probably because Rubio supported an amnesty deal.

Potential Republican primary voters appear most open to supporting Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker for president in a new poll that shows overall voters are clamoring for “change” even more than they were in 2008.

Fifty-six percent of Republicans said they could see themselves supporting Mr. Rubio, and 53 percent said the same for Mr. Walker, according to the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Twenty-six percent said they could not see themselves supporting Mr. Rubio, and 17 percent said the same of Mr. Walker.

Fifty-two percent said they could see themselves supporting former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, but four in 10 say they could not see themselves supporting him.

Forty-nine percent said they could see supporting former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, with 42 percent saying they could not see themselves supporting Mr. Bush and 40 percent saying the same of Mr. Paul.

I think right now it’s pretty clear that Walker is the most electable conservative candidate although I am hoping to see more from Bobby Jindal and Ted Cruz in the future.

If I had to choose one Republican who gives great speeches on what it means to be a conservative, I would pick Marco Rubio. (25 minutes)

Here’s an article from Human Events about the speech, for those who can’t watch it or listen to it.

Excerpt:

Rubio ranked the strength of the American people alongside the importance of economic and military strength, for it is our people – not our government – who have made us great. He sees critical institutions of society, which contribute to the strength of citizens and families, under assault by the Obama Administration. “We have a President who, just a few days ago, issued a mandate ordering religious institutions to follow his ideals… telling religious-based organizations that they must, by mandate of the federal government, pay for things that religion teaches is wrong. You may not agree with that religion’s teachings, but that’s not the point. The point is that the First Amendment still applies. Religious freedom still exists.”

He confessed he isn’t sure what the foreign constitutions Justice Ginsburg admires might have to say on the matter, but he knows what the United States Constitution says: “The federal government does not have the power to force religious organizations to pay for things that organization thinks is wrong!”

On the scale of history, only a “moment” has passed since world wars were fought against totalitarian evil. What followed could hardly be described as “world peace,” and cleaning the blood from the edge of the statist hammer has not softened its essential nature. “Today millions of people around the world are part of the middle class because of the rise of democracy and free enterprise. Did that happen on its own? Is that the natural state of man?” Rubio suggested a study of humanity’s long history beneath the boots of oppressors answers that question.

Democracy and free enterprise spread, not because they are humanity’s default condition, but because “the most powerful nation in the world believed in these things, fought for these things, spoke out for these things… and most importantly, was an example of these things.” The power of the American example transcends military and political force, because “all around the world, there are people who know there is someone just like them, living here, doing things they cannot.”

“What happens if we diminish, because we can no longer afford to be the leader of the free world?” Rubio asked. “What happens if we diminish because our leaders decide they don’twant to be the leaders of the free world anymore? What happens if we retreat? What happens is that we’ll leave a space, and that space will be filled by someone else.” The likely candidates for our successor as global hyperpower are totalitarian states like Russia and China… whose measure Rubio took by noting that they’ve vetoed United Nations efforts to rein in Syria’s dictator, Bashar Assad, because they reserve the right to use such brutal tactics against their own people.

Rubio understands that the clash of civilizations cannot be won from an easy chair, or a death bed. “The greatest thing we can do for the people of the world is be America,” he concluded. “That’s what’s at stake here. That’s what November will be about.”

It would be a shame if all the people who flee to America, to escape from socialist decay and totalitarian repression, found the very things they fled awaiting them on our shores. It pays to take a moment and see our exceptional nation through the eyes of those tired, poor, huddled masses, as Marco Rubio has done.

And so, if defining the proper role of government was one of the central issues of the Reagan era, it remains that now. The truth is that people are going around saying that, well, we’re worried about – let me just add something to this because I think this is an important forum for candor.

I know that it is popular in my party to blame the president, the current president. But the truth is the only thing this president has done is accelerate policies that were already in place and were doomed to fail. All he is doing through his policies is making the day of reckoning come faster, but it was coming nonetheless.

What we have now is not sustainable. The role of government and the role that government plays now in America cannot be sustained the way it is. Now some are worried about how it has to change, we have to change it. The good news is it is going to change. It has to change. That’s not the issue.

The issue is not whether the role that government now plays in America will change. The question is how will it change. Will it change because we make the changes necessary? Or, will it change because our creditors force us to make these changes?

And over the next few moments I hope to advocate to you –- I don’t think that I have to given the make up of the crowd –- but I hope to advocate to you that, in fact, what we have before us is a golden opportunity afforded to few Americans.

We have the opportunity –- within our lifetime –- to actually craft a proper role for government in our nation that will allow us to come closer than any Americans have ever come to our collective vision of a nation where both prosperity and compassion exist side-by-side.

To do that, we must begin by embracing certain principles that are absolutely true. Number one: the free enterprise system does not create poverty. The free enterprise system does not leave people behind.

People are poor and people are left behind because they do not have access to the free enterprise system because something in their lives or in their community has denied them access to the free enterprise system. All over the world this truism is expressing itself every single day. Every nation on the Earth that embraces market economics and the free enterprise system is pulling millions of its people out of poverty. The free enterprise system creates prosperity, not denies it.

The second truism that we must understand is that poverty does not create our social problems, our social problems create our poverty. Let me give you an example. All across this country, at this very moment, there are children who are born into and are living with five strikes against them, already, through no fault of their own.

They’re born into substandard housing in dangerous neighborhoods, to broken families, being raised by their grandmothers because they never knew their father and their mom is either working two jobs to make ends meet or just not home. These kids are going to struggle to succeed unless something dramatic happens in their life.

These truisms are important because they lead the public policies that define the proper role of government. On the prosperity side, the number one objective of our economic policy, in fact the singular objective of our economic policy from a government perspective is simple — it’s growth. It’s not distribution of wealth; it’s not picking winners and losers.

The goal of our public policy should be growth. Growth in our economy, the creation of jobs and of opportunity, of equality of opportunity through our governmental policies.

And the most gripping part of the speech:

To me, this is extremely special, and I’ll tell you why. During the ’80s, politically especially, there were two people that deeply influenced me. One clearly was Ronald Reagan, the other was my grandfather, who lived with us most of the time in our home.

We lived part of our life, especially the key years, ’80-’84, in Las Vegas, Nev. And my grandfather loved to sit on the porch of our home and smoke cigars. He was Cuban. Three cigars a day, he lived to be 84. This is not an advertisement for cigar smoking, I’m just saying to you that …

He loved to talk about politics. My grandfather was born in 1899. He was born to an agricultural family in Cuba. He was stricken with polio when he was a very young man, he couldn’t work the fields, so they sent him to school. He was the only member of his family that could read. And because he could read, he got a job at the local cigar rolling factory.

They didn’t have radio or television, so they would hire someone to sit at the front of the cigar factory and read to the workers while they worked. So, the first thing he would read every day, of course, was the daily newspaper. Then he would read some novel to entertain them.

And then, when he was done reading things he actually went out and rolled the cigars because he needed the extra money. But through all of those years of reading, he became extremely knowledgeable about history, not to mention all the classics.

He loved to talk about history. My grandfather loved being Cuban. He loved being from Cuba. He never would have left Cuba if he didn’t have to. But he knew America was special. He knew that without America, Cuba would still be a Spanish colony. He knew that without America, the Nazis and Imperial Japan would have won World War II. When he was born in 1899 there weren’t even airplanes. By the time I was born, an American had walked on the surface of the moon.

And he knew something else. He knew that he had lost his country. And that the only thing from preventing other people in the world from losing theirs to communism was this country – this nation.

It is easy for us who are born here –- like me –- and so many of you, to take for granted how special and unique this place is. But when you come from somewhere else, when what you always knew and loved, you lost, you don’t have that luxury.

My grandfather didn’t know America was exceptional because he read about it in a book. He knew about it because he lived it and saw it with his eyes. That powerful lesson is the story of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. It’s our legacy as a people. And it’s who we have a chance to be again. And I think that’s important for all of us because being an American is not just a blessing, it’s a responsibility.

As we were commanded to do long ago, “Let your light shine before men” …

[PAUSE – he is overcome by emotion]

…“that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.”

Well, as we gather here today in this place, that pays homage and tribute to the greatest American of the twentieth century, we are reminded that for him and for our nation, being a light to the world, that’s not just our common history, it remains our common destiny.

I cried at the part in bold above.

Here’s the verse he cited – Matthew 5:16 – in context: [NASB]

13 “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men.

14 “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden;

15 nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.

16 Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.

I notice that he cites the NASB, which is my favorite translation – the translation closest to the original Greek.

On my Facebook page, I have Matthew 5:13, which is the verse that comforts me when things look bad in my life – when my plans haven’t worked out the way I hoped they would. Things look bad for us right now as a nation. Maybe we need to reconsider these words.

This speech is being well-received everywhere. Permit me just one reaction from the UK Telegraph, which is still punch-drunk from socialism-induced rioting caused by the anti-marriage, anti-family, anti-father policies of the secular left Labour Party.

Excerpt:

Two of the brightest rising young stars in American conservatism today are Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio. Neither are running for president in 2012, but both will be strong contenders for the vice presidential running mate slot, whoever wins the Republican nomination. And I wouldn’t be surprised to see Ryan or Rubio eventually sitting in the Oval Office itself at some stage in the future. After all, Congressman Ryan of Wisconsin is only 41, and Senator Rubio of Florida is just 40; they have decades of public life ahead of them. They are both deeply principled politicians in the Reagan mould who grew up during the late Cold War years, and share a profound belief in American exceptionalism and the need for the United States to maintain its position as the world’s leading power.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Congressman’s Ryan’s superb speech on foreign policy to the Alexander Hamilton Society in Washington, remarks which outlined in stark terms the challenges the United States faces if it is to avoid decline. Ryan’s address, which I attended, was probably one of the most important statements by a US politician on American leadership this year.

Senator Rubio’s speech yesterday at the Reagan Presidential Library in the presence of Nancy Reagan, was another key address by a Member of Congress that deserves to be widely read, both at home and abroad. Like Ryan, Rubio offers a powerful rejection of the Big Government approach that has crippled America’s economy, and outlines a firm defence of the free market, championed by Ronald Reagan.

There is something very different and special about America. And Marco Rubio reminds us all what it is in this speech. A speech heard ’round the world! A reminder of our principles – of our role – and of our responsibility to the world.

In this speech on the floor of the Senate, he lays the whole debt problem and the solutions.

I just wish that the voters would compare Obama’s class-warfare rhetoric and his performance on job create with Marco Rubio’s clear explanation of the incentives and motives of job creators. We don’t need redistribution of wealth, we need people to have jobs. When people have jobs, they feel comfortable to investing or spend money.